Jill Can Cook: The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

It's been years (seriously, YEARS!!!) since I've made cookies from scratch. The only time I've not made cookies from prepackaged mixes is when someone's given me one of those mason jars filled with all the dry ingredients, so all that needs to be done is adding the wet ingredients. I definitely do not prefer the prepackaged stuff, it's just that it's easier.

In the last couple of years, I've moved a couple times, been pregnant, had newborns, breastfed, and have not always had the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom, so I'd all but given up on making my sweets from scratch due to being busy with other stuff. But... I finally have a little bit of time and lots of desire, so I searched and searched online (for like 5 minutes, maybe 6) for a cookie recipe that would be perfect for my first (in a while), awesome batch of cookies from scratch. I only hope they deliver the wonderful goodness they promise!!
 

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe EVER!

 (I didn't start with this recipe, but I followed it back to Savory Sweet Life)

 

Ingredients:

I always forget something.. Like the other stick of butter! Don't worry, I cooked with it, just didn't photograph it.

 

• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
• ½ cup sugar
• 1½ cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2¾ cups (12 oz) all-purpose flour *If at all possible, please weigh the flour
• ¾ tsp. smallish-medium coarse sea salt (or 1/2 tsp table salt)
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1½ tsp. baking powder
• 2¼ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I added some white chocolate chips)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 360 degrees.
2. Cream butter, sugar, and brown sugar until it is nice and fluffy (approx. 3 minutes on medium-high speed).
3. Add both eggs and vanilla and beat for an additional 2 minutes.
4. Add baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour until cookie batter is fully incorporated.
5. Finally add chocolate chips until well distributed. The cookie batter should be somewhat thick.
6. Optional: Refrigerate cookie batter for a few hours before baking. This will help them keep their shape!
7. Drop about 2 tablespoons of dough or use a medium cookie scoop and plop the batter onto an ungreased baking sheet.
8. Bake for 12-14 minutes until the edges are nice and golden brown.
9. Remove from heat. Allow the cookies to stay on the cookie sheet for an additional 2 minutes, then move to wire cooling rack, or wax paper. 
10. Makes 48 cookies.

 

 

First of all, I don't have any semi coarse sea salt. Only really chunky sea salt. So, I opted for table salt. The original blogger preferred people to use the medium coarse salt because it adds little pops of saltiness. I didn't mind not having that. Also, in true Jill form, I had some leftover white chocolate chips from a recipe I did a while back, so I dumped what I had left, which amounted to about 1/4 cup, in with the regular semi-sweet chocolate chips. 

The batter after I creamed the sugars and butter, then added the eggs and vanilla.

The batter after all the ingredients were added.

I'm not sure why, but I have very few pictures of the making of these cookies. That was it. The process was kind of boring, so maybe that's why.

Anyway, I made the batter in the morning, decided to refrigerate it for the afternoon, and actually make the cookies when Joe got home from work so he could have "fresh out of the oven" cookies. The recipe said that if I refrigerated the batter, I'd end up with really fat cookies. But I ended up with these:

Very thin cookies...

Don't get me wrong, they ended up being extremely delicious. They really lived up to their name. They were so great, in fact, that after I inhaled 3-4 of them, I made Joe bring them to his work and force them on his coworkers. Luckily, his coworkers were happy to take them off my hands!

Joe and the kids could not stop eating them either!!

I'm surprised they lasted long enough to take pictures of them!!

I gave Mitchell a cookie while the chocolate was all melty and he made a BIG mess!!

We all loved these cookies. They were sugary and chocolatey. They were nice and soft with chewy edges. The white chocolate really gave them an added layer of flavor. The only thing that wasn't awesome about these cookies was that they came out super flat, but that was probably my own error. I guess I'll just have to keep making these until I get it right. And once I get it right, I better continue to make them in order to ensure I don't forget what I did to make them perfect. I'm thinking I might have to make these at least once a week (-;

P.S. Since I won't be blogging on Christmas, Merry Christmas to all 2 of you that read this blog! I hope the holidays bring you much happiness!! Please drink responsibly and be safe on the roads, if you're traveling tomorrow! I'm sorry that I've not kept up on here as much as I would like and as soon as the Christmas trees and all the decorations are back in the basement, all the gifts are unpacked and put away, and we don't have 30 parties to attend per week, I promise I'll be back to my old posting schedule!!